


Growing Pains

by Paranormal_Shitness



Series: A Show Of Force [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (Obi-Wan voice) For The Love Of The Force Anakin Jerk One Out Would You?!, Anakin is so Horny for Padme it’s Obnoxious, But Like For Dirty Talk it’s Pretty Clean, Dirty Talk, F/M, Force Bond, M/M, Master/Padawan, Masturbation, Multi, Obi-Wan Has to Suffer the Fallout, Praise Kink, Sexually Confusing, Sexually Repressed Jedi, Space is Confusing, force connection, situational humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:04:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22973734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paranormal_Shitness/pseuds/Paranormal_Shitness
Summary: Following a call from Senator Amidala, Anakin and Obi-Wan are dispatched to Grizmallt to negotiate the cost of goods and trade on behalf of the people of Naboo. But, when Anakin is too bothered by the reminder of the pull he feels toward the former queen to focus on their mission, Obi-Wan finds himself in the uncomfortable position of moral support during an awkward moment in his Padawan’s pubescence.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: A Show Of Force [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655293
Comments: 14
Kudos: 127





	1. Release

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the description in the Clone Wars narrator voice.
> 
> Might fuck around and continue this but don’t take my word for it lmao i’m about to move house.  
> Set in 25 BBY

Transport was tight. Logging thousands of lightyears in interstellar travel through the vast empty void of nothing around them was tedious and costly. If they’d been doing so on either of their own incredibly meager dimes they’d never have left Tatooine all those years ago. Keeping their weight light was better for the council. Money was not an infinite resource. Obi-Wan had explained this at least a dozen times but it didn’t help.

Anakin remained with his head thrown over his shoulder, eyes focused on the vast nothing around them, groaning from time to time.

“Last time we were given a vessel of a proper size,” the boy complained.

“It was a longer trip,” Obi-Wan reasoned.

This earned him a long suffering sigh. “But that ship had a hyper drive,” Anakin insisted. This was typical. He was a very insistent person. Forceful even. Not a typical temperament for a Jedi. Yet promises were promises and Anakin was Anakin.

“I would think for such a short flight, we shouldn’t need it. Take patience, my young Padawan. Observe your meditations should the ticking of the clock bore you.”

Around them, the electrical whirr of the engines and computers beat a steady and comforting rhythm. Anakin sighed again. Deeper this time, as though he had been called by a stage director to redeliver a flat line.

“I can’t focus, Master,” he admitted.

This was not a surprise. Obi-Wan would not have had to be a Master himself to sense Anakin’s distraction. His feelings lay in utter disarray all around him, vague and diffuse, the unnamable growing pains of pubescence. “Patience, Anakin,” he cautioned again. “Whatever is troubling you must be let go in order for you to pass the time at the very least.”

“I know that,” Anakin argued. Now, he began the nervous tick of drumming his fingers across the flight controls again. 

“Anakin, please, I’ve told you a thousand times, the sound is really starting to gra-“

“Well I have to move! I can’t sit still like this!” Anakin shouted, erupting up out of his seat and stalking the four steps to the back fo the cockpit before returning. “Why couldn’t they have given us a little extra space?!”

“If you need sleep, there are bunks just there in the wall,” Obi-Wan suggested, but this was only cause for even more annoyance in his charge, who buried his hands in his hair and made a sound like a wounded animal.

“I don’t need sleep,” he said after several moments in which he stood there, lowing mournfully at the viewing screen. 

“Then what could possibly-“

“I don’t know! I can’t sleep! Eating has grown tiresome! I sit and I fret and I’m awake all hours!”

Obi-Wan started by taking a deep, meaningful breath. Teaching a Padawan Learner meant taking the time to restructure the world for their mind and their mind alone. It was his duty to Anakin to show the patience he asked for. “What are your feelings?”

“Nothing,” Anakin said, voice threatening to go from sullen to incredibly sullen, “I’m restless. There’s this energy. Like an itch under my skin.”

“Mm,” Obi-Wan said eloquently. Between this, albeit brief and vague, description of the issue and his sense of Anakin’s frayed, pubetic mental state, he had a fair guess as to the cause for the issue but that made him no more inclined to be stuck dealing with it. Especially not in such close quarters.

“I don’t want this to sound offensive,” he began, nervous over Anakin’s delicate sense of self, “But when was the last time you saw to your private needs?”

This seemed an odd enough question to Anakin’s mind, that it stopped the boy’s panic in its tracks. “Private needs?” The boy questioned him.

“It’s just,” Obi-Wan began, reaching over to initiate the autopilot function. “Where do your thoughts focus when you have these feelings?” he asked.

Anakin looked nervous, almost vulnerable standing there behind his own seat, brow furrowed heavily. “I think of the transmission we received from Senator Amidala,” he admitted. “I think about her face. The lines of her nose- her cheekbones! She’s fascinating. The way she moves when she speaks-” A sort of softness tinged the edges of his fervor as he spoke of her. The kind of longings one found often in puppy love. 

“I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

“Something like what?”

“You’re love sick, Anakin,” Obi-Wan explained.

Yet this was clearly a ridiculous concept to his pupil. Anakin scoffed and threw himself back down on his seat. “Love sick,” he parroted sarcastically, picking at the hem of his tunic.

“And yet you can’t hold still,” Obi-Wan observed, flicking through a few displays on the terminal simply for something to do. “You think of her constantly.” 

“I can’t be love sick,” Anakin continued to insist but the passion had gone out of it. “I’m a Jedi Knight.”

“You will be,” Obi-Wan corrected.

Anakin’s eyes rolled so hard they looked like they would sublimate under the friction. The atmosphere in the tiny cockpit had grown to a point of palpable awkwardness throughout this odd confrontation. And the harsh edge on Anakin’s breathing was a constant reminder of just how awkward it truly was. 

“It’s really not so dramatic as you seem to think it is. As with all things there is a simple solution to this problem,” Obi-Wan explained.

This, did seem to catch Anakin’s attention. He gave up a bit of the fiddling he’d been doing with his clothing and turned to actually visually regard his master. “What is it I have to do?” He asked in the gravest possible tone a Padawan might use 

Obi-Wan felt his mouth run a little dry. This wasn’t exactly a conversation he wanted to be having but according to the displays he’d been flicking through back and forth for the past few moments, they had quite a time yet left in transit between here and their destination on Grizmallt and dealing with Anakin in this state throughout that entire time was beginning to seem like more than a chore. Not to mention a liability in negotiating manufacturing prices on arrival. Having Anakin hot under the collar was never a good thing. 

“Well,” he began, licking his lips to try and keep them from sticking together, “It is an integral part of the Jedi code not to form attachments,” he said, staring directly ahead of them at empty space. “Which would require us to let go-“

“I am aware, Master,” Anakin cut in impertinently.

“-by seeking some release,” Obi-Wan finished.

“Release?” Anakin demanded.

Obi-Wan rolled his lips together and tried not to scream. How could his own Padawan be so dense. And at such an age. No. He was a teacher, a mentor, it was not his position to compare the advancement of his own learner to the advancement of any other. It wasn’t productive. Master Qui-Gon had told him that many times. Anakin was simply going at his own pace. 

“Yes,” he said when the urge to berate the boy had passed.

“Master, what sort of release could there possible be f-“

Obi-Wan swallowed another wave of annoyance, speaking now directly to the terminal. “Of the carnal sort,” he explained. 

The mortified squawk Anakin made then was a noise Obi-Wan could have made himself. Never once in all the time he had seen himself carrying out Master Qui-Gon’s wishes to train the boy had he expected to have this conversation.

“I can’t do that!’ Anakin insisted, quite absurdly too.

This time, Obi-Wan turned to him. Thinking that perhaps Anakin had not previously understood how to see to his own needs was one thing but finding now that it was some issue of reluctance or perhaps even outright refusal seemed preposterous to him. “And why on earth not?” He half demanded.

“I can’t impugn my own morals for some momentary release!” Anakin told him, horror plainly apparent on his young face.

Obi-Wan had to struggle not to laugh at the absurdity. “Impugn? How in blazes-“

“To seek such carnal things at an improper time. Outside of marriage or proper coital congress-“ Anakin began but Obi-Wan held up a hand to stop him. 

“Anakin,” he said, tone firm, “To become a Jedi Knight you must not stoop to any undue attachments to another being but that doesn’t mean you need to repress your own anatomy. There are ways t-“

“Wasting yourself away to nothing is certainly not the Jedi way!” Anakin cut in, “I won’t hear of it.”

‘Wasting?! Anakin, be reasonable. Where would you ever even have heard such talk?”

Anakin regarded him, face naked, feelings clear both in the force and his expression. Confusion reigned supreme here, fear hiding behind its legs like a worried child. “Tatooine,” he said as though it were the most obvious thing to say in the world.

And put like that it was. Anakin had been nine when he was freed and allowed to leave in pursuit of his destiny as a Jedi Knight. That would have potentially been old enough to begin experimenting with such personal attentions and to have been heartily discouraged from wasting any bodily fluids in such extreme heat. A cultural taboo on masturbation would be a way to keep individuals fit and population rates up even under such harsh conditions. But anywhere outside a desert climate, this made no sense. 

“This isn’t Tatooine, Anakin,” Obi-Wan explained. At this point, he was beginning to feel like a long suffering parent. Anakin truly was most able to try him to the limit of his patience. 

“I don’t see how that matters,” the boy insisted.

Obi-Wan offered him a sigh. “Tatooine is hot. The water in your cells might simply evaporate out from under your nose. Certainly one shouldn’t be wasting precious liquids on an activity that bares no fruit,” he reasoned.

“Exactly,” Anakin agreed.

“But here, Anakin,” Obi-Wan insisted, waving a hand through the cool, humidity controlled air around them, “We’re perfectly suspended in the ideal environment for our anatomy. We have liquid to spare.”

Suspicious eyes regarded him from his Padawan’s face. 

“You don’t believe me?” Obi-Wan asked.

Anakin shook his head. “Master,” he reasoned, as though he felt he were speaking to an idiot child himself. “You are assuming the two of us have the same anatomy.”

“Assuming?” Obi-Wan repeated. “Anakin, we’re both human!”

“Yes but you were raised on Coruscant. Meanwhile, I’m a slave from Tatooine. There could be slight genetic divergences. Perhaps even notable ones,” Anakin reasoned. A sort of flush had raised on his cheeks at this point, just too light to be noticeable under normal circumstances, but clearly visible beneath the oversaturated glow of the cockpit spotlights.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, subverting the urge to lay a comforting hand on his Padawan’s shoulder because the amount of tension radiating through their mutual connection to the force would make that more than a bit uncomfortable for them both. “I promise you, nothing bad will happen if-“

“If I abuse my anatomy?!” Anakin interrupted.

The air in the cabin seemed too thick for normal movement. The both of them sat there, unmoving, as though frozen with mortification. Anakin’s face had gone truly red now, Obi-Wan noticed just before he noticed the smell. Potent in such close quarters. Arousal. He had no moment to question his instinct to look down but what he saw there did not surprise him even as Anakin whipped it out of sight behind his robes. 

It spelled only more turmoil in the space laid between them. Obi-Wan drew a deep breath as he turned his attention back forward, laying his hands on the controls just to have something to hold onto. Something to grip in this trying time. 

“Anakin,” he said, once he’d had ample time to steel himself, “I am telling you now that it is a long way from here to where we ought to be,” padding his word count was something he found useful in a stressful situation and now he hoped it would give him time to find the right words, “We are in cramped quarters and there will be no distractions besides sleep and meditation. If you’re too wound up it could lead to violence between us, causing friction in our connection through the force, jeopardizing our bond as master and pupil. It is imperative you see to your duties in remaining loyal to the Jedi code and I, as your Master, say this is how you ought to do it. So I want you,” here he pointed behind him to the bunks in he wall, “to go spend some personal time in your bunk.”

His Padawan made a sullen show of pouting into the neck of his own tunic before violently excusing himself from his seat. There was a shuffling as he crossed the cockpit and adjusted himself into his bunk. In this moment, Obi-Wan saw it fit to reach for his own meditative peace. He took a deep breath, staunchly ignoring the heavy scent of puberty on the air and steadied his feelings. Inside him, he had learned to imagine a door that once opened lead him to another place, a place where thought did not matter, where he was simply one with the universe. Distantly, his body relaxed into guiding their transport, discomfort sloughed off him like sleet on a speeder’s wing. 

But just as total peace claimed him, Anakin’s voice broke his concentration.

“Master,” he said, a full blown whine in his voice now. Obi-Wan refused to look back at him. “How should I-“

Judgement was out of place in their dynamic. It was unhelpful. Only a hinderance. Yet, Obi-Wan could not help himself from saying, out loud, the words, “Come on, Anakin.” Which got him another sulky silence and a radiating negativity that seemed to utterly overtake their tight quarters.

Obi-Wan took another steadying breath before chancing a glance over his shoulder. Anakin lay in his bunk, scowling, clothes still in perfect order. Obi-Wan turned back around and reached once again to reign his feelings in more thoroughly. He was a master. His sole duty at the moment was to properly teach his Padawan Learner the ways of the Force, help him become the Jedi he needed to be and if that meant keeping him level headed by giving him some sort of private lesson they would never speak of again he would just have to rise to the challenge. The universe was a mystery and so too was Anakin.

“Take your drawers down,” he instructed.

Anakin muttered a disgruntled, “This is strange, Master,” but Obi-Wan heard him comply, the hissing of fabric on fabric as Anakin began to disrobe himself. Likely minimally, he did so hate the cold. 

“Try not to think of me,” he advised. “Think instead, of Senator Amidala.”

“It’s hard not to,” Anakin admitted.

As far as Obi-Wan was concerned, that was half the battle. “Good,” he said, biding his time, trying again to find the words. “Now you ought to use your hand.”

“Which one?”

Obi-wan prided himself on his patience but Anakin was truly a test in his own right. “I don’t know. Your sword hand,” he suggested. “And grip.”

“Are you sure this is alright, Master?” the boy asked then.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan insisted. “Trust your instincts, Anakin. Follow your feelings. Let them guide you through it.”

“It feels wrong,” his Padawan insisted. 

“Just,” he began, struggling to keep his tone level, struggling to remain calm and not shout at the boy. “Move your hand.”

“But if I injure myself,” the boy argued.

Obi-Wan drew a short breath through his nose and offered a very flat, “You won’t.”

“Master, you’re right there-“

“Think of Senator Amidala,” Obi-Wan instructed him. “What is it about her?”

“Her eyes,” Anakin said. His tone was weaker now, there was a sort of tremble creeping into his voice which matched the trembling of his Force connection in the air. “Her mouth,” he added.

“Good boy,” Obi-Wan assured him again, almost on wrote but the words felt suddenly awkward and out of place in his mouth. “I want you to think about her with her hair down around her face,” this got him a soft gasp, “and her cheeks flushed. Her eyes are heavy lidded and her mouth is open, wet,” he paused here and swallowed, again reaching to steel his own emotions as Anakin made an odd, stilted noise behind him. “She takes off her robe,” here Anakin’s breathing hitched audibly. “And sinks to her knees before you.”

Anakin groaned this time. “I don’t think I should, Master,” he protested.

“You’re doing fine, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “Just keep a rhythm. Think about the feeling of her mouth instead of your hand.”

“It feels good,” the boy muttered.

“Warm,” Obi-Wan suggested and Anakin moaned again, deeper this time.

“I want her to-“

“Swallow you,” Obi-Wan finished as the boy trailed off. The breathing behind him had reached fever pitch and beneath that he could now hear the unsteady motion. 

“Master, it’s too much,” he whined. And he was right. The frayed edges of him skittered through the cabin, inane but insistent in pushing themselves up against any resistance.

“You must push through it Anakin,” Obi-Wan told him, doing his best to find some distance from the excess energy in the tiny cabin, to emotionally detach from this strange situation and simply accept it as it was. “You must let go.”

“Her tongue, Master-“

“That’s it.”

There was a noise now, some keening as Anakin’s breathing came to a stand still. 

“Let it come through you,” Obi-Wan insisted. 

And Anakin’s voice cracked as he said, “Master, I-“ but he wasn’t able to finish the sentence because he had lost himself in that moment. 

Obi-Wan felt it, was intimately and awkwardly aware of Anakin’s toes curling into his boots and his teeth grinding together as release finally hit. Then, in an instant it was over and a true silence took over in the face of everything. Anakin was calm now. A deep peace had settled in his bones and sleep seemed short after it. But as Obi-Wan sat there, looking forward to many more long hours of flight, he felt as far from at peace as a Jedi could possibly stray.

____________

  



	2. Retain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My favorite Obikin dynamic is Brothers to Jackoff Buddies To Lovers

The turmoil that had started in transit did not dissipate upon their arrival on Grizmallt. Anakin was perfectly fine in his peace, but Obi-Wan could not find a way to break the war the boy had started in his feelings by being so stubborn and sensitive. Never had Obi-Wan even once heard of a boy needing reassurance through out the entire act of seeing to himself. Certainly enculturation was a powerful force to be reckoned with. It would make it significantly harder for Anakin to acclimate to his destined celibacy if he had already been indoctrinated into the mindset of an outer rim slave who’s morality asked him specifically to satisfy himself through connection and attachment to civilians. This revelation, hung a heavy omen on the horizon of Anakin’s future. The diametrically opposed reality of his own code of ethics and that of the Order. And what a place for that to finally show in a way Obi-Wan understood when Yoda had been trying to warn him of this the past six years. Oh but Master Yoda could never know. Not as a forecast to be made beforehand and not now that the strange thing had happened. Because it wasn’t the new worry he held for Anakin’s destiny as a Jedi that had him truly reconsidering his position in life.

No. It was the fact that he had realized in that moment, as Anakin relieved himself in the bunk behind him that he could not remember the last time he had seen to himself well enough to even estimate how long it had been. Which was a feeling akin to suddenly realizing he was dying of starvation and hadn’t noticed until it was too late and certainly he couldn’t see to it now. Not when his mind was still so preoccupied trying to sort the mess of a situation he had just endured. 

They arrived and the mission went smoothly, somehow, or at least that was the remark Anakin made as they readied themselves for take off. Obi-Wan found himself unable to remember any of the details of what had occurred. As though he’d left his body on autopilot throughout whatever exchange they’d had with the Supervisor. 

They spoke little, save a bit of light hearted joking from Anakin until they’d well passed the planet’s gravitational field at which point, Anakin turned to him and said:

“You seem distant, Master.”

“Do I?” Obi-Wan asked, trying to diffuse the question by offering it half a chuckle.

Anakin frowned at him. “I may not yet be one with the Force, Master, but I’m no longer a novice to your feelings or mine,” he said.

This, seemed more than bold speech to Obi-Wan, and from his own Padawan no less. It sent a wave of annoyance over his skin, across the fine hairs on arms, even as he knew that Anakin was right. The boy was externally minded in every way that Obi-Wan was internally minded and certainly he made quick work of dissecting everything around him to his own convenience in understanding the universe, but that made it no less uncomfortable to be his subject. 

“And what is that supposed to mean?” He asked his young pupil, who took a thoughtful quality as he kicked his feet up on the terminal.

“It’s simple, Master,” he said confidently, “I know you.”

Obi-Wan took the chance to size the boy up once more, as was so important to do regularly with growing adolescents. He was taller than last Obi-Wan checked, almost imperceptibly, and his hair was longer, darker in color. The line of his nose had gone hard and rigid as he began to truly approach manhood. Obi-Wan could remember being this age and all the tension between him and his own master but there had never been anything like this. This, he truly hated.

“Perhaps,” Anakin persisted, “I should take the responsibility of flying today-”

“That won’t be necessary, Anakin.”

“-so that you can-“

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan cut in. “Be serious, I mean it.”

“Yes, Master,” Anakin told the display screen, trying desperately to hide a vindictive smile behind a look of contrition. Of course, this failed deception only proved to make him more suspicious.

Obi-Wan had been relying heavily on breathing exercises throughout his entire relationship with Anakin, but now it was starting to feel as though he’d been unable to breathe normally for days and filling his lungs all the way down to his diaphragm was starting to become exhausting. Anakin snickered as Obi-Wan let air run back out his nose slowly. 

“There’s nothing to laugh at,” he told the boy. “We’re on incredibly important business, Anakin.”

“And it’s finished,” Anakin said. “Why don’t you relax?” He suggested.

“I can relax when we get back to Coruscant,” Obi-Wan told him.

“In two days.”

“And, as a Master, waiting two days until I have a chance to unwind will be no problem for me,” Obi-Wan said with a lot more confidence than he felt. 

Anakin did not seem convinced. All the same he sighed to himself and stood from his seat. “I suppose you won’t mind flying for me again then,” he said, pacing behind Obi-Wan almost idly.

“Anakin, I really am asking you to be serious.”

“I am,” the boy told him.

“Well then you’ve made a miraculous recovery from your delusional ideation,” Obi-wan snipped.

Around them, the air was cool and crisp and the area confined enough that Obi-Wan could track Anakin’s movements through the cockpit without needing to rely on the Force. Even as the Force screamed at him as it always screamed about Anakin. As though his padawan were larger than life. A veritable force to be reckoned with.

And Anakin, to both of their enormous misfortune, had the gall to say, “I had a good teacher.”

The air was beginning to chap Obi-Wan’s nose from the consistent three part breathing. “Anakin, sit down,” he said firmly.

To which is Padawan replied with a sullen, “Fine,” and slid back into his seat. 

A comfortable amount of time passed then in utter silence, both of them calm and collected until Anakin seemed to get the bug back in him to be an utter nuisance again. 

“Do you think she’s pretty, Master?” he asked and of course Obi-Wan knew who ‘she’ was as soon as the boy said it.

But he chose to play dumb anyway. “Who?” he retorted.

“Senator Amidala,” Anakin said predictably. 

This seemed like a loaded question and yet the boy had cast him a rather expectant look. “Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Well certainly she is, isn’t she? So I shouldn’t have to think it.”

“I guess not,” Anakin said, tone level and even in the face of the controversial topic. “Well do you think we’d make a good pair?” he pressed.

This question was even more loaded. “That I wouldn’t know, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “You are training to become a Jedi and such thoughts ought not be entertained by a proper Knight.”

Anakin scoffed at this.

“Listen to me,” Obi-Wan insisted. “You think I speak as an old codger with no life experience but don’t assume I’ve never been in your shoes. I had my own politician once, back when I wasn’t much older than you are now.”

This perked Anakin’s attention. The boy braced his hands on the arm rests of his seat and pushed himself fully upright, almost leering into Obi-Wan’s space. 

“Did you do it?” He asked, face and tone both as grave as the buried dead. 

“No, Anakin,” Obi-Wan chided. “I doubt she ever even knew a thing about my affections. We had a professional relationship and it was never meant to be anything more than that. Once she no longer had need the Counsel’s protection, we parted ways and likely that was best for both of us.”

A pout stole over his Padawan’s excited features, crumpling his face as he crumpled his body back into his chair. “This,” he said pointedly with a small gesture of disapproval, “Is why I think you’re an old codger with no life experience.”

Obi-Wan tried to ignore him. It wasn’t something he thought of often but the memory of the regret was enough to bother him even as he refused to acknowledge the feeling. 

“If I had the chance to see Senator Amidala again, I’d waste no time,” the boy boasted. 

He was foolhardy, Obi-Wan told himself. Young and brash and too hard headed not to think himself better than his station. An arrogant child if Obi-Wan had ever met one. And with great cause, Anakin was arrogant because he was everything he thought and more even, which most people they came into contact with were too stupid not to praise him for.

“Attachment-“ Obi-Wan began but Anakin headed him off.

“I know!” His padawan griped at him loudly. 

“But clearly you don’t _understand_ ,” Obi-Wan insisted. 

Anakin’s offense was palpable. 

“You’re young,” Obi-Wan told him. “And you were raised outside the temple for the first nine years of your life. How could you possibly have come to grasp the meaning behind the code in six short years? It’s not meant as an insult, Anakin, merely a fact. Take patience. Wait. Meditate on your lessons and you will learn.”

“The counsel can’t be my father, mother and lover in one,” Anakin said.

“They must be. A knight swears his fealty to a cause. Something greater than him.”

“And I’m ready for that,” Anakin insisted. “I don’t fear commitment to the counsel, Master. But can you really agree with a code that asks us to give up our humanity?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said staunchly. “We aren’t civilians, Anakin, and there are many reasons our commingling with others can lead to strife. A Jedi’s duty is to the galaxy and its people. Not to himself. Not to individuals. Not even those individuals he loves. As such it’s best to avoid intimate connections of that nature.”

Anakin huffed and crossed his arms, sinking low in his seat. Still the boy Obi-Wan had known all these years even in the face of all that had transpired between them recently. Here and there in the edges of his face, he was that tiny slave Master Qui-Gon had found on Tatooine. This time, Obi-Wan did not suppress the urge to reach out and lay his hand on Anakin’s shoulder.

“Perhaps, there will be no great romance in your future, but we have each other, and there is no taboo on the affection we share,” he promised.

“Yeah,” Anakin said with the same tone many teenagers would reserve for the word ‘whatever’. 

Obi-Wan hid his disappointment at the response behind a rueful smile. “Whether you feel it or not, you are like a brother to me,” he pressed.

“I know,” Anakin pouted.

This silence was not nearly so welcome or comforting as the last had been. Anakin sulked low in his chair until the quiet became unbearable and Obi-Wan began leafing through their files for something to put on. Music sounded like a light distraction. One they could both use. He had just turned to ask Anakin what he’d like to listen to when the boy’s face stopped him dead in his tracks.

His Padawan looked an angry sort of devastated that Obi-Wan had no idea how to handle with care.

“Anakin,” he said, a nervous laugh underscoring the name. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Anakin said, sinking impossibly lower in his seat. 

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan pressed.

“I don’t feel well,” the boy explained.

“Well why don’t you try to m-“

But Anakin wasn’t having it. “I don’t want to meditate!” He snapped. 

Obi-Wan felt his irritation roll out through the cockpit and he felt the shift when suddenly Anakin’s breathing picked back up. 

“If we just had more space, we could-“ his Padawan babbled. “I just wanna be able to move around!”

“We aren’t that far out from Grizmallt,” Obi-Wan said, “I could turn us around, give you some time to stretch your legs but it would severely delay our arrival back to Coruscant.”

Anakin threw his hands into his hair and groaned. “No,” he grumbled under his breath.

“Well I’m feeling the cabin fever too, but I thought perhaps a bit of Quenk Jazz might lighten the load. Don’t you agree?”

“I hate music,” Anakin pouted. It was a statement they both knew was not true but Obi-Wan didn’t see fit to argue it then.

Another deep conversational lull played out between them until Anakin said, “Is it strange, Master?” 

“What?” Obi-Wan asked.

“What happened on our way to Grizmallt.”

“Well I wouldn’t call it usual,” Obi-Wan said.

He refused to look at Anakin as they discussed this, but still got a strong impression through the Force of the boy’s emotional state. There were the tiniest edges of shame creeping back in on him. 

“Is that why you won’t-“

“Anakin, please,” Obi-Wan cut in. “I’m not comfortable discussing my needs with you.”

“But I’m your Padawan. We’re connected in the Force. It-“

“It’s not like that, Anakin.”

“I want a distraction, Master,” the boy argued.

“Well I’m certainly not going to be the distraction-“

“But if it’s normal sh-“

“Anakin, if you’re really still so restless, why don’t you go see to yourself again while I listen to my Quenk Jazz and we can both be happy?” Obi-Wan suggested.

“Fine!” Anakin said, robe snapping around him as he whipped himself out of his chair.

There was just enough time before Obi-Wan hit ‘play’ for him to hear Anakin throw himself into his bunk and begin wrestling with his clothes. He tried not to think about it. Tried to focus on the music but Anakin was insistent through the Force. Even more, it wasn’t the overwhelming inability to keep to himself he’d shown on the flight there, now it was deliberate. He would not be ignored. He made a wall of his feelings and pushed it up against Obi-Wan’s back until it threatened to envelope him. And then the noise started. Just breathing at first, slow and deliberate but climbing quickly into something needy. Consistent enough that it wasn’t easily covered by the faint cover Obi-Wan had given himself. Again, the smell of him filled the tiny space, seeping into every corner and saturating it. Obi-Wan tried to ignore it, tried to focus on the music but it was impossible. Anakin refused to let him. 

“Master,” the boy groaned and, realizing it had all become quite futile, quite ridiculous, Obi-Wan shut the music off.

It didn’t occur to him that the next impulse he had, one to swing himself around in his seat and berate the boy for his insolence face to face, was a bad one until he’d caught an eyeful of his own Padawan lying there with his cock out. Their eyes locked in that moment, Anakin noticeably boastful through the Force, Obi-Wan openly panicked. A tense smattering of seconds passed where Obi-Wan stared and Anakin lazily pumped himself off before it occurred to him he should turn back around, which he did, pushing himself as far into his seat as he possibly could go.

“We could think about her together,” the boy suggested.

Obi-Wan could see her face behind his eyelids. Not Amidala. Satine. He tried to reach for his own peace of mind but she was there, blocking him. Her high cheekbones, the elegant slant of her long nose. How her hair looked worn loose around her face on the very few times he’d had occasion to see it down. And it felt a torment to see her that way. In the echoes of Anakin’s own thoughts, his thoughts on Amidala, Obi-Wan could see Satine as crisp as the last time she’d been close enough for him to almost touch.

Anakin groaned. “What does she look like, master?” He asked.

Obi-Wan shut his eyes even tighter, hoping the contraction in his muscles would dispel the memory but it didn’t. He refused to participate in this ridiculousness again, not with his own Padawan, and certainly not to be as complicit as he was the first time but he was uncomfortably aware of himself. His own, years old yearning, and the unseen-to needs of his body. Anakin was pushing him and the boy knew it but had anyone ever been able to stop him going after that what he wanted? Why this was on that menu suddenly, Obi-Wan couldn’t possibly understand but he very much got the feeling that Anakin would persist until the war between them was over by some scorching defeat or another. 

“Master,” Anakin whined.

Breath control had been all but lost quite some time ago and now, Obi-Wan found it difficult to even pull half a breath through his panic tightened chest. “It’s not proper, Anakin,” he managed to say but the tone of his voice came out all wrong, breathy where it should have been firm.

“I wanna see her like you see her,” Anakin insisted.

Through the Force between them, Obi-Wan could feel the boy and against his own wishes, against his own leg, he felt himself throb in response. “Anakin, it is not the Jedi way to ruminate on atta-“

“I don’t care,” his Padawan said plainly.

Obi-Wan chewed on his own words for a moment. “Anakin,” he started, staring hard at the terminal, over aware of the sound of movement behind him, slow, deliberate, “I- She was blonde,” he admitted, hiding himself from his own reflection in the display screen by folding a hand over his forehead. 

“Pretty?” Anakin asked.

“Beautiful,” Obi-Wan agreed. “And Elegant.”

“Like senator Amidala,” Anakin said.

“Very much so. In some ways,” these words were comforting, they allowed him to focus his mind on the respect he felt for the Duchess, but it wasn’t what Anakin wanted to hear.

“Her body,” the boy pushed.

Obi-Wan swallowed thickly. “I never saw-“

“But how did you imagine her?” The boy pressed.

Instantly, a flood of old fantasies, most of them banal- kissing her, holding her, being near her came rushing back to him, all along with every illicit thought he’d ever had. Still, more than anything, he imagined running his hands over that scar, pressing his lips against it to soothe the long forgotten pain.

Behind him, Anakin swore quietly, voice almost choked. “Master, please,” he urged.

“Slender,” Obi-Wan began. “Like Amidala but taller. Her wrists were delicate but her hands were strong. It was the first time I imagined-“ Anakin groaned. “I wanted her hands on me.”

“Please, Master,” his Padawan repeated.

A growing warmth against Obi-Wan’s leg, told him this whole mess had gotten far beyond sloppy. Almost painfully so. “I nearly kissed her once,” he admitted shamefully to his own erection.

“I want to feel it like you feel it,” Anakin said.

Suddenly, it seemed stupidly obvious what Obi-Wan was being asked to do. “Anakin, I ca-“

“Master, I need you,” his Padawan whined and Obi-Wan could see her as he’d always imagined her just behind the lids of his eyes with every blink he took. He could remember the smell of her, distantly, and the way she’d felt heavy, real in his hands. 

His own flesh was a ghost of that weight through the linen of his pants. Anakin gave a full bodied sigh as he slid his hand along it. He felt the boy’s muscles contract, constrict around the air in him, toes curling, teeth digging into his lips. But more than that, in such proximity, suspended as they were in the Force with nothing else to bother them, no noise, no distractions, he could feel Anakin’s hand almost as surely as he felt his own.

When he groaned, the boy groaned with him. 

And something broke then. Some sort of self control snapped like the frayed edge of an over extended rope. Obi-Wan fumbled through his own clothing as quickly as he could to get to himself. The direct contact was enough to make them both shudder. In both their movements the pace instantly quickened. 

“Master,” Anakin whined as they fell into a rhythm together. A feverish motion in them both. Graceless and without thought or shame. 

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and leaned his head back against his seat. Where Anakin’s fantasies went, his followed, offering subtle suggestions. Their minds traveled up the same expanses of flesh together as one, imagined hands cupping every curve in unison until their breathing had synched, until Obi-Wan could hardly see even with his eyes open, until the boy was sobbing for him and orgasm ripped its way up through their legs, into their chests, leaving them both shuddering in the aftermath.

It was not a release, he thought as they began to break apart once more, to loose the utter intimacy of that animal moment as it passed them by. He felt no looser than he had emotionally. Where physically he was unwound, loose even, shame clouded his feelings. This should not have happened. 

But Anakin didn’t seem to notice. Too pleased with himself to consider what might lie beyond the boundaries of his own reality. Obi-Wan saw no reason to discuss it with him. He was suddenly exhausted. As though everything had been drained from his body. Strangled maybe, he corrected himself, regarding the mess in his own hand with distaste. It had been strangled out.

“Thank you, Master,” the boy mumbled behind him.

Obi-Wan said nothing. Instead he reached for the engine rag under the terminal and wiped himself down as his Padawan’s breathing seemed to even out, as it had last time, a sure sign he’d fallen into a shallow nap. Boys would be boys, Obi-Wan told himself. This wasn’t that abnormal. They hadn’t touched each other. Hadn’t looked-

The memory of Anakin lying there, eyes damning, pupils wide, clothing thrown open across his groin, hand on his own erection, as cocky in this as he was in anything. No, twice as much, Obi-Wan joked mirthlessly with himself. He shouldn’t have looked. He shouldn’t have lingered. Certainly he shouldn’t have. But nothing that strange had happened. It wasn’t as thought this were an act of sexual congress. There were no rules against this. Even if someone did know neither of them would be reprimanded they would just be-

Reassigned.

It would have to be kept a secret surely, but it wasn’t as though they had anything to really feel guilty about. They weren’t ruminating on attachments, they were comforting each other in their grief for lost longings that they’d never had the chance to even have in the first place. This was normal. Anakin was like a brother to him.

It changed nothing.


End file.
